WINSTED – There’s balance, and then there’s what the Lester Prairie/Holy Trinity boys basketball accomplished in their 63-30 victory against Legacy Christian Academy Thursday night. Not only did the Bulldogs have 10 players in the scoring column in the win, not one player scored more than nine points.
“That’s fantastic balance,” LP/HT coach Nat Boyer said. “The thing was, everybody stepped up. It wasn’t one guy. We saw the floor well.”
Not only did the Bulldogs have their most balanced attack offensively of the season, their defense came ready to play. Even with a slow start offensively, the Bulldogs were in control from the get-go because of their defense. The Bulldogs (4-5, 1-0) held the Lions scoreless for the first nine minutes of the game, and held them to just 30 points for the game.
“Defensively, we threw a lot of looks at them,” Boyer said. “That’s what we wanted to do. We want to see improvement throughout the year. That was a big part of it. We needed to come out and make a defensive statement.”
With a shaky start to the season behind them, the Bulldogs are officially on a roll. After starting 0-4 on the season, the Bulldogs are 4-1 in their last five games with the only loss coming to Glencoe-Silver Lake.
“That’s one of the reasons we scheduled the way we scheduled,” Boyer said. “We wanted to see where we were at, and what do we have to do to get that level. Now we start working our way up there. We’re 4-1 in the last five games. We’re continuing to gain more confidence and their starting to believe in themselves. We believe in what we do, but now they start believing in themselves and they keep building from there.”
“We kind of all got connected together,” junior guard Michael Ziermann said. “In practice, we work hard together and play as a team. When you’re together and you get that communication, that’s the biggest thing for us. We communicate well together, we play well together.”
Look for the rest of the story, as well as more HJ sports coverage, in the Friday, Jan. 12 edition of the Herald Journal. Click here for subscription information.
Follow Kip Kovar on Twitter: @Kovar_HJSports